Jeffrey Morgenthaler

Latest Drink Recipe

Man, there are few things out there more polarizing to people than creamy drinks. And it’s funny, you know, because I think it’s a pretty universal thing that our mouths just water at the sight of a creamy cocktail. Look at a properly made Ramos Gin Fizz. Or a White Russian. Or Egg Nog. How delicious do they look?

But then there’s this guilty feeling that I think kicks in for most people, where it’s like, “I can’t justify drinking something that contains a bunch of fucking cream.” And I get it, I totally do. Personally, I also try to save up those points and spend them during the holidays.

But there’s no getting around the delicious factor. So what about alternatives? I like almond milk in my coffee. I even make my own at home. But one creamy substitute that I can’t live without in my life is horchata. See the previous post for more on that. Anyway, as someone who has been making drinks for almost half of his life at this point, I had to try making something with horchata.

My partner in crime at Clyde Common is a gentleman named Benjamin Amberg. But we all call him (among other things), simply Banjo. Banjo and I have a great way of working on cocktails together. It’s very collaborative, and nobody gets too attached to an idea if a better one comes along. (I wrote more about this process for Playboy, check it out)

And so it happened that we started working on our new horchata cocktail. And, of course, we broke out all of the typical formulas that we’d both seen on menus before: aged rum and horchata; aged tequila and horchata; variations on a White Russian with horchata instead of cream. And none of them were working, and we were about to scrap the whole idea.

But then we had a thought: what if instead of a flabby, creamy drink, we did something more bright and citrusy? We certainly hadn’t seen that done before, and we know rice milk isn’t going to curdle the way cream would. And suddenly, within minutes, we’d assembled what is quickly becoming one of our most popular new drinks, the Southbound Suarez. Named after our favorite song on our least favorite Led Zeppelin album, I like to think the same stands of a reminder of just how tough this one was to create.

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A side project, an experiment or just a simple curiosity that turned into a delicious phenomenon that we're still serving to much delight at our bar, barrel aged cocktails explore the gentle manipulation of a drink's flavors over time. This post details the inspiration, the history and the methods behind my barrel aged cocktails.

My problem with homemade tonic water has always been a flavor profile that was too esoteric for the general audience. This recipe takes some of the positive qualities people have come to understand from commercial tonic water and updated them with fresh ingredients.

Turned off by the glop you find in the grocery store, and unable to endure another long egg and cream whipping session, I set out to build an egg nog recipe from the ground up that retained the character of the orginal formula, was easy to make in a few minutes at home or at the bar, and tasted absolutely delicious. See if you agree with the result.

One question I'm often asked is "Do you have any drink-related book recommendations?" Well, funny you should ask, I've compiled a list of the ten books every professional bartender or home mixologist should own. I keep every one of these close at hand and have read most of them several times. I suggest you do the same.

The problem with living in Oregon is the absence of little wooden shacks by the sea that sell cases of fresh ginger beer stacked on back porches. But with some readily-available ingredients, a recipe I've been revising for several years - and a few free minutes - I can easily transport myself to a little fishing boat on the ocean as I sip a Dark and Stormy made with fresh, house-made ginger beer.

It's always mojito season somewhere, so this advice is timely in your area about half the year. Wether you're making them or simply enjoying them, this advice will help you look like a pro in no time at all.

Not to be confused with the Spanish wine-and-fruit-based alcoholic beverage sangria, sangrita (meaning "little blood") is a traditional accompaniment to a tequila served completo; a non-alcoholic sipper that cleanses the palate between fiery doses of agave.

The world of booze can be mystifying to people that don't work in bars or around alcohol all the time. I hear a lot of assumptions about the industry I'm in that are - much like 90% of what you hear in bars - completely false. Here are a few you've probably heard yourself.

The traditional garnish for a Pisco Sour is a couple of drops of bitters in the foam, but I've never been particularly impressed with the way these few paltry drops of bitters sat in their little egg-white mattress and didn't play along with the rest of the drink. I envisioned a Pisco Sour with a uniformly-distributed bitters-scorched foam: slightly crisp as the fire burnt the sugars, and slightly warm as the foam insulated the rest of the frosty cocktail from the heat. A pisco creme brulée in a glass!

I always love showing up to a party with a gallon jug of pre-mixed margaritas, so I've decided to share my recipe. This margarita recipe is the perfect blend of strong, sweet, and sour. But be warned: this recipe packs a serious punch.

There isn't much I can say about this video that hasn't been said already. If you've read anything I've written about cocktails, you'll understand why this video symbolizes everything wrong with the state of bartending in America today. Watch and learn, but be warned: this one isn't for the feint of heart.

About Me

My name is Jeff Morgenthaler and I'm the bar manager at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon.

I've been tending bar since 1996 and writing about it since 2004. I started tending bar while getting my degree in Interior Architecture, and slowly I came to the conclusion that bartending was what I really loved, and that I might as well drop everything and focus on being a professional bartender. Over the years I have strived, both behind the bar and with this website, to elevate the experience of having a drink from something mundane to something more culinary.

The writing I do here is intended as a work in progress. My recipes are like my opinions: they are constantly being revised and refined as I work them through my mind and my fingers. Comments and participation are encouraged, so please don't feel the need to tread lightly here.

Happy New Year! I hope the holidays treated everyone well, especially you professional bartenders out there. I think the only folks who have it harder than we do during December are our friends in the retail business, so now that we’ve moved on to January, let’s all raise a glass.

Hey, there are a lot of spaces for people to get together and talk about cocktails online. I, for one, was raised on the classics: the Hotwired Cocktail site, the DrinkBoy Forums, and eGullet. These days, there is a great little community over at Reddit, and recently they asked me to participate in an AMA, an “Ask Me Anything” chat session where I got to answer some great questions from a bunch of really cool and passionate folks.

I recently stepped away from Facebook, which used to be a source of cocktail connectivity for me but has slowly devolved into a morass of political posts, so Reddit is a welcome refuge of old-school cocktail discussion. I hope you’ll join me over there and contribute to this terrific group of cocktail enthusiasts!

If you don’t tend bar for a living, or haven’t at some point in your past, you probably don’t understand the quick thinking that we have to do every single second. So, in order to demonstrate what sort of complicated math we do regularly to those who don’t tend bar, and to act as a sort of fun series of brainteasers to those who do, I present to you bartender story problems. Enjoy. Cheers.

And please post your answers in the comment section.

Paula is 42 years old. She weighs 127 pounds and is 5’-8” tall. If she consumes one Grey Goose and soda every 40 minutes for 3 hours, how many seconds does it take for her to scream “Opa!” when the bartender accidentally drops a pint glass on the floor?

Greg’s bar tab is $157.30. If he wants to leave the bartenders an 18% gratuity, plus an extra $1.50 for each drink he received on the house, how long after he’s left the building will it take for the barback to notice he took the signed copy with him?

Susan has one 6-oz glass of wine and four 10-oz glasses of water over the course of the 2 hours she spends at the bar. Assuming she makes one trip to the restroom for every 15 ounces of liquid consumed, how many trips will it take before her creepy Tinder date makes a rapey comment about slipping a roofie in her drink while she was away?

Chad does not believe in washing his hands when he uses the restroom. If he consumes 8 pints of Coors Light over the course of 3 hours, and eats 2 olives from the bartender’s garnish tray for every trip he makes to the toilet, how many people can he get sick in one night? (Assume 120-seat restaurant for this problem, and show your work.)

Kyle, Aidan, and Madison have been cut off by the bartender and are planning to share an Uber home. If Muhammed is 4.7 miles away, traveling at an average of 28 miles an hour with very little traffic, how long does the group have to make inappropriate comments about his ethnicity before he arrives to pick them up at the bar?

Tristan has been tending bar for exactly three months. He can serve the following number of guests over the course of the next week:

Monday: 37 people
Tuesday: 45 people
Wednesday: 62 people
Saturday: 119 people

Assuming these totals are the same as the mean averages for the next three weeks, how many people will pretend to care about the housemade birch bark bitters he’s working on?

Kayla is walking to a neighborhood bar located .73 miles from her house, at a pace of 2.39 miles per hour. Last call is in 2 hours. If she reads a Dr. Oz article about wheat allergies right before leaving the house, how many times will the bartender be informed that Tito’s is the only gluten-free vodka before closing?

Leaf, McKenzie, and Willow split a four-course meal with cocktails and wine, and their bill is $187.50. Assuming they calculate a gratuity of 1g of marijuana per every $20 spent, how much money will their server need to collect from her other tables in order to pay her rent?

A 12-person bachelor party has chosen a Tiki bar to spend the night drinking in. If the bar carries 127 different types of rum, and each member of the party can consume one glass of rum every 22.6 minutes, how many times will the best man ask the staff about the availability of Pappy Van Winkle?

Cody is a professional athlete. He weighs 223.81 pounds, is 6’ -1.22” tall, and has a BMI of 29.21. His yearly salary is $242,000, which makes his weight-to-dollar ratio $1081.2743 dollars/pound. Solving for X, how many pounds per square inch of pressure will he be able to apply to the bartender when asking for a free birthday shot for the girl he just met?

BONUS QUESTION

Hayley has a ticket up for 1 Ramos Fizz, 3 Mojitos, 1 Pisco Sour, and a well vodka tonic. Assuming she can make an average of one drink every 45 seconds, how many minutes will she spend running around the restaurant looking for all the components for the herbal tea someone just ordered?

This appalling affront to the craft that so many of us have worked hard trying to restore over the past fifteen-plus years has been making the rounds on Twitter, but I thought I’d share it here with all of you. Browse at your own risk, my advice is to keep a bucket handy.

1. The Avatar: “…the citrus vodka honors that beautiful tree of life.” – I’m not sure how citrus vodka honors much of anything other than a can of Red Bull.

2. The Blind Side: “When her son wins the football game, God bless, she gets to go home and have her cocktail.” – With a whopping 2¼ ounces of half-and-half on top of that Irish Cream, you’ll look like Sandra Bullock in no time.

First of all, my apologies to everyone who asked, “Do you hate my eyes?” this month after having to see my name in print a whopping three times. But for those of you who missed even one, here’s a wrap-up. And no, I don’t hate your eyes.

First up, I was quoted in a Wired piece about laptop etiquette in bars. Wired is one of my favorite magazines, so my inner nerd is beaming with pride that I was asked to contribute my thoughts. I also blushed every time one of my mouth-breathing Trekkie friends called or emailed to congratulate me. It’s good to be accepted by one’s peers.

Next, Playboy Magazine selected the Bourbon Renewal as their Drink of The Month for May. As it’s every heterosexual man’s dream to be flown down to the Playboy Mansion to make drinks for Hef and his fabulous friends, I feel that I’m at least one step closer to getting that invite… right? Also, I was able to justify a purchase of this fine publication by explaining, “I’m just reading it for the article about me.”

So, Oregon is the best, as everyone knows, but here’s another reason why: Oregon whiskey.

The November issue of Food and Wine Magazine has a great story by Nick Fauchald on page 170 about the rise of Oregon whiskeys, and credits our plentiful raw ingredients (grain, water, wood) and do-it-yourself spirit for a new revolution in American whiskey production. Of particular interest to me was this:

With “Whiskey Your Way,” amateur distillers make their own barrel of bespoke whiskey at House Spirits under [Lee] Medoff and [Christian] Krogstad’s tutelage. At the cost of around $5,000 (about $50 a bottle), Whiskey Your Way participants can customize their whiskey in whatever style they fancy: bourbon, rye, Irish, Scotch, or, if Medoff has his way, Oregonian.

Cecchini nails the quotidian life of a bartender down with the sort of accuracy that only a true lifer could. A must-read for anyone currently or formerly in the business, or just those with mild flirtations or aspirations.

You can buy this brilliant take on the business here. Better yet, pick up an extra copy and leave it as a tip for your favorite barkeep – if they haven’t read it already.

If Gary’s chapter on drink families were the only chapter in this book, it would still be worth the cover price. This is probably my all-time favorite guide to mixology and bartending, all wrapped up in one place.

You can buy the Joy of Mixology here. Put it someplace handy, use the hell out of it, and then pick up another copy when you can no longer read the first.

I have a pretty good palate and an okay memory, so I feel comfortable with my own assessment of the spirits I carry behind my bar. Paul Pacult has a mind-numbingly brilliant palate and is a terrific, no-nonsense writer. So rather than rely solely on my own take on the brands I choose to stock, I also keep a copy of Kindred Spirits 2 behind the bar at all times. It’s an essential reference to the vast sea of flavors we’re confronted with every day.

Any bar serious about spirits has this book somewhere in the building. Grab a copy here and do the same.

This is the book that I had at my side for years as I taught myself to make cocktails the right way. Paul’s attitude toward the craft is opinionated and brilliant. I think about the words in this book nearly every night I’m behind the bar.

Sadly, this one’s out of print, so plan on spending a pretty large sum if you want to buy one of your own – but it’s worth it. If you do stumble across a copy in a used bookstore or garage sale, grab it without hesitation.

This book is subtitled The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, and chapter nine is the most in-depth, scientific analysis of the production of alcohol you’re going to find anywhere. Read it once, slowly, and then give yourself some time to digest. It’s a heavy read but worth the workout.

He’s not as fun as Alton Brown, but he may have taught the man everything he knows. Pick up your own copy here.

The problem with huge drink encyclopedias is that they often contain recipes of questionable origin and proportions. This book is no different in that regard, yet it still remains the quintessential reference on Prohibition-era drinking. I often absentmindedly turn to it first.

Buy The Savoy Cocktail Book here, and then follow along here as Erik Ellestad makes every single drink in the book and reports back with a write-up complete with photo. Amazing.

Once again, you can’t begin to understand where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. Not content to be a mere history of beverages, this book is truly a history of human civilization as seen through beer, wine, coffee, tea, spirits, and Coca-Cola.

I find myself having to buy this one from time to time, as it seems to be the first books I want to loan out. Get yourself a loaner here.

New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes understands something a lot of people take for granted: the cocktail, like jazz music or mass production, is one of America’s greatest contributions to the world. Follow along as he details why this is, and provides additional commentary to augment the experience.

The good news is that a book this good is fairly inexpensive and plentiful. Pick up a copy here.

Sometimes consuming alcohol is something done alone at an airport bar, a necessary drug dose taken before a bumpy ride. But when alcohol shows its true beauty is when it is enjoyed with good food. This book not only helps take some of the mystery out of pairing alcohol with food, it also helps open the door to approaching booze from a more culinary perspective.

This one came out just last year, so it still runs a little steep. Pick up a copy here, or just add it to your Wish List and hope that someone takes notice this season.

I’m sure you’ve seen some glaring omissions on this list, so feel free to leave your bartender book recommendations in the comments below.

As you stated in your recent post, we can’t possibly be expected to know the full gamut of odd-named and (sometimes) purely awful drinks that tend to get ordered every once and a while. I was wondering, is there one comprehensive (preferably small and inconspicuous-looking) cocktail book that covers a large percentage of these drinks? I just want to know what you would recommend if I wanted to have one book behind the bar for these situations (I know you recommend Harrington’s book, but I simply can’t afford to drop $100 – I’m in the struggling college student bartending camp at the moment). Any advice?

Thanks,
Scott

Hey Scott

The reality is that you only need to know how to make a few key drinks really well in order to be a successful bartender. Everything else is bullshit and you can look it up in the book. Look, I’ve got a secret: I don’t know how to make a Purple Hooter.

I’ve made a few of them, but we don’t really get too many requests for Purple Hooters where I work. So, every time someone orders a Purple Hooter, I’ve got to break open something we refer to as the Big Book of Dumb Drinks and remind myself what goes in a Purple Hooter. This usually happens about once every three months.

The book we use is called The Bartender’s Black Book by Stephen Cunningham Kitteredge, but we just refer to it as “The Big Book of Dumb Drinks” since it catalogues every silly, sexually-named, nightclub-oriented, childish, dumb drink you’ll ever get an order for.

It’s wonderful. Really. It’s spiral-bound, so it lays flat. It’s small, so it doesn’t take up much space behind the bar. And it’s actually got a bunch of other useful information.

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Build a Better ($5.63) Muddler

I was having this conversation with a writer about my new book on cocktail technique last week, and she got on the subject of bar tools. “A lot of this stuff is really expensive,” she said, “Do you have any advice for home cocktail enthusiasts who don’t want to spend a ton of money?”
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